The voting out of a government or the disempowerment of a dictator may fail if there is no incentive for the individual to participate. A strategic approach is developed which shows the election-participation-decision as an N person chicken-game. With the introduction of selective benefits, the problem is solved insofar as there is only one Nash-equilibrium in which everyone participates. The participation in a revolution can be represented as an N per-son prisoner's dilemma, which can be transformed into a coordination problem - though only if the first-mover-problem that arises can be solved. The result of the strategic approach is that the stay-in-power-restriction is mandatory for democratic governments only. Therefore this paper provides one more theoretical explanation for the positive correlation between the de-gree of democracy and prosperity in cross section comparisons.